This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Futuristic gifts for the office

Ah, the dull, dull monotony of office life. How better to make things a bit more interesting at work than with some high-tech, nigh-on-futuristic gadgets and executive toys?

Livescribe smartpen – $100 – $150. If you still regularly use a pen or pencil at the office — to take notes, for sketching diagrams — then you should grab a Livescribe smartpen, which automatically digitizes your scriblings and beams them to your computer. Version 3 of the pen ($150) requires an iPhone or iPad; if you’d rather pair it with your Windows or OS X laptop, you’ll need the previous-gen Livescribe Echo ($100). The Livescribe pens also act as an audio recorder/dictaphone, which can be rather handy.

Laser projected keyboard – $100. For around $100, you can now buy a semi-decent projected virtual Bluetooth keyboard. Just like the early laser keyboards, these newer ones still aren’t all that great — they’re just not that accurate — but they definitely still have the ooh cool factor. If you know someone who does a lot of typing on a smartphone or tablet, a projected laser keyboard could be exactly what they need to boost productivity at the office.

Neodymium magnets – $20. Neodymium is a rare earth element that can be used to make incredibly strong permanent magnets — like, so strong that you’ll struggle to pull two quarter-inch neodymium magnets apart. Sadly, ball bearing neodymium magnets are now quite hard to get in the US, but little cube magnets are still easy to obtain on Amazon. If you can find some Buckyballs (the spherical neodymium magnets), they make for a fantastic executive toy — but please, keep them away from kids.

WiFi-enabled coffee maker – $150. If you want to make sure that your coffee is always perfectly fresh when you go to the office kitchen, check out the Mr. Coffee WiFi-enabled coffee machine. It’s essentially just a normal percolator, but with a companion WeMo smartphone app (iOS and Android) that lets you set up a brewing schedule, or to simply turn the machine on remotely.

The Chairless Chair – $???. The Noonee exoskeleton, which attaches to your hips and shoes, allows you to sit down anywhere at any time — just sit back, and the exoskeleton takes the weight. Obviously, this would be amazing for anyone who spends a lot of time standing up at work. Sadly, it isn’t commercially available yet — it’s being trialed by Audi and BMW on its production lines — but it might be available in time for next Christmas.

Thinkgeek is probably the goto techy sub-$50 shopping site. Uncommongoods has a geek section. I also have to give a shout out to TavernPuzzle dot com. They have the best old-school blacksmith puzzles. They make good decorations for the man cave once you solve them.

How in the world do you exclude the best smart watch out there? Moto 360… Staples was selling it for under $200 today.

Decimal

Because its a smart watch.

Charles Walker

You need help.

Decimal

Help with what? Telling time? Because I am surrounded by so many ways to get that information that certainly I don’t “need” a smart watch for that.

Charles Walker

Oh man, you need more help than I realized. :/

Decimal

Does this smart watch come with a troll detector? Apparently I could have used one before I decided to respond to your first response.

Charles Walker

If you think a smart watch is only good for telling the time, you need to do more homework. Also, the fact they mentioned the G Watch and others while pretending the Moto 360 didn’t even exist was just an error on the author’s side.

Decimal

When did I ever claim that a smart watch “only” tells time? Seems to me you need help with reading comprehension.
Also, the point of the article wasn’t to list every smart watch known to man, so leaving off the one you’re plugging is not an error.

Charles Walker

In your previous comment, which I’d rate a 0.0, you being the decimal in the middle. With a smart watch market so small, you don’t exclude the one in highest demand.

Decimal

I merely asked if what you were implying is that I needed help telling time, which still failed to elaborate on what exactly it is that I need help with. I never said a smart watch is only good for telling time. Keep working on those reading skills… or did you expect your smart watch to do that for you? Apparently its not as useful as you thought.

Yeah, I think the subdermal magnet implants tend to be quite weak. Like, enough to gently tug on your skin, but not much more than that. Some subdermal magnet users report being able to ‘feel’ electromagnetic fields with them.

My nephew was using a pair of neodymium magnets to plug his nose and they somehow rolled and rotated and ended up deep in his nostrils. He’d probably advise against any sort of internalized neodymium magnets.

Mike K.

Bravo on the use of Robot Santa in the link-pic. Long live Futurama.

BillBasham

Wow, just scrolling the foc.us web site made me smarter…

I find it interesting that every time I get together with my geek friends, we intentionally reduce our intelligence by chemically attacking brain cells. If instead we increased our intelligence, would we then have no social life whatsoever?

Liz Encoultre

Great list! Also Amazon list is also very good too. http://goo.gl/JfBz7z I found lots of cool gadgets and useful office things. I got the Lumiy Lightblade 1500S from the list.

Guillaume Drolet

Nice list of gifts that are either way too expensive or not even available yet…

Marcin Wietlicki

I always wanted Myo, it would be great to manage devicees through arm movement. Maybe someone will gift this to me as a christmas present :P remontowisko.pl

Nick Freytag

Great article, I love reading about new tech gifts. The only problem is, like many have mentioned, that the cost of the gifts are pretty extreme. Luckily, I own a 3D printer, and am planning on printing my own gifts this year for friends and family. You should check out this list of things i’m printing if you have a 3D printer too and are looking to save some $$ this year! http://bit.ly/3Dgiftguide1B

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

ExtremeTech Newsletter

Subscribe Today to get the latest ExtremeTech news delivered right to your inbox.

Email

This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our
Terms of Use and
Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time.